tablets-for-restaurants
Anthony Dexmier

Anthony likes helping people reach their true potential. Being the victim of his own fears and insecurities in his own business, he has decided to help others create more opportunities.

Most restaurants don’t want anything to do with tablets. They are costly. Restaurant owners don’t want to go through the trouble of training their staff to use them. You don’t know how customers are going to react to a change in the way they order. These are normal concerns. But what if tablets for restaurants could could become a way for you to save money? What if they could actually improve customer experience and make your staff more effective?

What you can do with a tablet

tablets-for-restaurants

Tablets for restaurants can actually do a lot of things. You can display your menu on them, and even allow customers to order pay their bills with them. Some tablets have games so that children can play with them, and some are just for waiters.

Some restaurants have completely replaced their paper menu with the tablet system. That has the advantage of reducing waiting time for customers and the headache for your waiters. This is the option most restaurant owners are reluctant to use, but let’s see why it can be the best idea you’ve ever had.

Tablets for restaurants improve customer experience

At first, putting a tablet on a table instead of having a waiter ready to serve may seem too impersonal and tactless. Think about it though. You will always need waiters to serve the food and check on your clients. Most of the time, these waiters are busy taking orders or communicating with the kitchen. If you remove those two tasks, waiters can be more available to your customers, and they can bring out food faster.

Customers know it’s normal to wait for a dish to arrive. They don’t come to the restaurant to be in a rush, but they don’t want to spend three hours at your table either. What customers don’t like is to wait for the bill to arrive, or for the waiter to take the order. By putting a tablet on every table, they can order exactly when they’re ready, and your waiters won’t be blamed for their inefficiency.

As a waiter it’s hard to manage everything at the same time. When you get a full house, your waiters are extremely busy and stressed out, which results in poorer quality service. By giving them less to do, you give them the opportunity to do it better and increase the size of their tips. Everybody wins.

Tablets for restaurants reduce your costs

tablets-for-restaurants

Hard as it is to believe, tablets can actually reduce your costs. You don’t have to buy a tablet for every table. Some companies will let you rent theirs to test the tablets for restaurant system and adapt it to your specific needs. It is still an investment, but it’s not a gamble.

Actually, paper menus generally cost a lot more than restaurant owners anticipate. If you want them to have any kind of design, you can’t afford to make any changes for a few months after the menus are printed. Tablets allow you to change the menu items anytime you like.

The advantage of having a flexible menu is that you can try many different combinations and choose those that work best in terms of costs and customer experience. With tablets, the menu can change every single day if you want to. You can even split test two menus on the same day and get immediate feedback.

Tablets give restaurants a competitive edge

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As a business in a highly competitive industry, adaptability is a vital quality. It’s usually hard to poll your customers. Your waiters are busy enough bringing out food without having to ask for feedback at the end of every meal. By displaying a survey on your tablet, you can effortlessly know what areas to improve in your menu, or overall experience.

The last thing to mention is the ability of a waiter to increase the size of your customers’ bills. Some waiters are far better than others for that. With tablets, that’s a variable you can eliminate, as you can display items in such a way that customers are going to combine a drink to their menu, or be attracted by the dessert. You have more chances of selling the dessert if they see a picture of it on the tablet than if your waiter asks them if they wish to see the dessert menu.

Wrap-up

Far from costing an arm and a leg, tablets can allow you take your business to the next level. By improving customer experience and giving you a huge competitive edge, tablets and online ordering are the future for restaurants. You can wait for your competition to prove it to you, or you can be a pioneer and prove it to your competitors.